Ruidoso Downs new budget approved, court raise denied again

Erik LeDuc/Ruidoso News
Ruidoso Downs Municipal Judge Harrold Mansell came before the council a second time to request a raise for his staff. (null)

Ruidoso Downs councilors approved the newly revised budget for the city, though that budget again did not include a raise for the court administrator that Municipal Court Judge Harrold Mansell again requested during the council Monday meeting.

"I'm here for one thing, and that's to ask you to increase the salary of my court administrator," he said. "Previously I asked for $10,000."

After consulting with the administrator, Virginia Armstrong, after the previous rejection during the June 24 meeting, Mansell said he was only asking for $5,000 this time.

But that increase still wouldn't put Armstrong on par with most other court administrators across the state, he said, presenting a list of salaries across the state ranging from about $20,000 to $50,000 per year, though some were even lower than Armstrong's current level of pay, which Mansell estimated was about $35,000 per year.

"Judge, those figures you have, are those municipalities a lot larger than us?" Councilor Judy Miller questioned.

Mansell said that some municipalities listed were larger, some were smaller and others were the same size, "but we do a lot of business in this court."

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As the discussion moved towards a conclusion, Councilor Tommy Hood suggested that the budget adjustment for the increase be made. His motion went without support, the remaining councilors voting against granting the raise.

When councilors approved the budget without the increase, Hood cast his vote as "no," the only dissenting vote.

Budget

As for the budget itself, "balance" may be a apt term to describe the coming year.

Overall, Ruidoso Downs is budgeted to see revenues from across the board totaling $7,171,703, with expenditures at $7,159,100.

However, part of that budget, $270,906 to be exact, is not eligible to be calculated into the budget by state requirements that a municipality maintain a reserve, Finance Director Terri Mosley said.

So while it appears that the city's cash balance across all funds will actually drop in the coming year, $3,532,305 to the July 1 balance of $3,813,723, that's only a technicality - the balance, before mandatory reserves, came out to $3,826,326 - a narrow margin of growth.

The Hubbard Museum of the American West's funds balanced for the coming year as well, albeit with $160,000 in transfers from other accounts, such as the Lodgers Tax Fund and General Fund.

Under the current budget, and after "museum salaries were decreased after removing the director position," the expected revenues, including grants, came to $333,400 with expenditures at $475,012. With the transfers in place, there will be a surplus of $22,911 in the fund, Mosley reported.

The Lincoln County Transit also had required another transfer "to keep from being in the deficit," she added. "That will be adjusted in the final budget adjustments for last fiscal year."

Mosley added that she already had made arrangements to repay the transfer during the coming fiscal year. The transfer was for a total of $44,964 from the general fund. An additional $14,992 in transfers from other funds also are budgeted, further padding the narrow gap between expected income of $219,000 and expenditure of $203,974 for the transit.

There also was a bit of help from the state after funds owed from last year finally came in.

"Today I received reimbursements for April and May of last fiscal year from the Department of Transportation," she said. "So we repaid $30,000 of what was transferred."

As for the fire fund, that actually went up for the coming year, she said.

"We budgeted $58,584, but we actually received $70,858."

Otherwise, state funding diminished in some areas, such as the Emergency Medical Services fund for Ruidoso Downs.

"We originally budgeted $17,500, which we requested, but we received notice that we got $7,940, so I changed both the revenues and expenditures."

Upcoming work

Public Works Director Cleatus Richards also reported growing issues in procuring state funding, though projects were mostly going ahead as scheduled.

A Community Development Block Grant project along River Lane and Nevada Lane will begin moving ahead as the city goes out for contractor bids, effective July 22, he said.

"It's taken a while to get the engineering straightened out because there are so many changes the (Department of Finance and Administration) has made, but we're now on track," he said. "Hopefully we can start this project within a 60-70 day time period, which will put us in line, next year, for additional CDBG funds."

Other funds coming in meant another, larger project is looking to get off the ground as well.

"The process of selecting an engineer for the Colonias projects is taking shape and we're issuing a request for proposals from engineers," he said. "That will be about the 22nd, 23rd of August."

Funding for the Agua Friai Sewer Project already was coming in, beginning with $140,000 in Capitol Outlay funds, he said.

"That should, along with the Colonias funds, get us through the planning for the entire sewer project and also to do the necessary environmental studies for the entire project," he said. "The funding that was just approved, $700,000, will allow us to start the first stage. We'll continue to work on other CDBG and Colonias to pay for further stages, but at least we're started."

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